The U.S. Folklore, Proverbs, and Economic Behavior
Vol. 6, No 2, 2013
|
Ahmed S. Abou-Zaid Associate Professor of Economics Department of Economics – Eastern Illinois University, USA |
The U.S. Folklore, Proverbs, and Economic Behavior |
|
E-mail: asabouzaid@eiu.edu |
ABSTRACT. Social scientists strongly believe that the cultural values and norms motivate, guide, and influence the behavior of each and every society. However, studying the relationship between culture and behavior, notably economic behavior, is not very popular in the literature, mainly because of the vague and broad definition of the culture. Thereby this paper provides a narrow definition of the culture as “the set of beliefs and values that are often revealed in folklore of the country, where proverbs are the most concise form of the verbal folklore genres.” Using this definition, the paper attempts to relate several types of economic behaviors such as intertemporal choice of consumption, investment, risk taking, work and education, to a set of popular sayings, idioms and proverbs that are circulated in the American society. The paper finds that the observed economic behavior in the U.S. is influenced to an extent by the American proverbs and sayings.
|
|
Received: March, 2013 1st Revision: July, 2013 Accepted: September, 2013
DOI:10.14254/2071-789X.2013/6-2/11 |
|
|
JEL Classification: D03, Z13 |
Keywords: Culture, Proverbs, Popular sayings, Economic behavior. |
References
American Chamber of Commerce (2007), Snapshot of the U.S. Luxury Goods Market, Washington D.C.
Caserta, K. (2009),Luxury Good Demand, Boston, Dissertation submitted to Boston College.
Cilivetti, D. (2010), Levy is Right: 24/7 Consumerism in Killing Us, New York: Riverhead Local.
Cohen, L. (2003), A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, New York: Vintage Books.
Cross, G. (1993), Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture, London: Routledge Chapman and Hall Inc.
Cooray, M. (1996), The Australian Achievement: From Bondage to Freedom, Sydney: CCR.
Duncan, G., (1963), What do Americans Value? http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_196305_duncan.pdf
Guiso, L., Sapienza P., Zingales, L. (2006), Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes? Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 23-49.
Lau, K., Tokofsky, P., and Winick, S. (2004), What goes around comes around: The circulation of proverbs in contemporary life, Salt Lake City, UT: Utah State University Press.
Mieder, W. (2008), Proverbs Speak Louder than Words, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Khols, R. (2007), Why do Americans act like that? A guide to understand the U.S. culture and its value. http://moodle.hecua.org/pluginfile.php/602/mod_page/content/1/cross_cultural/Why_Do_Americans.pdf
Paredes, A. (1997), Folklore, Lo Mexicano, and Proverbs, Journal of Chicano Studies: Survey and Analysis, Vol. 13, no. 1-2, pp. 1-11.
Silverstein, M., Fiske, N., and Butman, J. (2008), Trading Up: why consumers want new luxury goods, New York: Penguin Group.
Weber, E., Hsee, C., and Sokolowska, J. (1998), What Folklore tells us about Risk and Risk Taking: Cross-Cultural Comparisons of American, German, and Chinese Proverbs, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 170-186.
Whiting, B.J. (1994), When evensong and Morrowsong Accord: Three Essays on the Proverb, ed. By Joseph Harris and Wolfgang Mieder. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
